Today, I’ll be reviewing the “How to build a social media following” webinar with Nathan Buchanan and Hannah Martin, otherwise known as “World Nate” and “Intrepid Introvert” respectively.

They are a happy millennial couple from New Zealand who have spent two years building a life (and an income) travelling instead of working boring 9-to-5 jobs. I can definitely relate – I just got back from a month-long work/travel trip in Europe, and wandering between the beach and a laptop for days on end is a pretty awesome way to live.

The two lovebirds having tea in England.

Together, they have developed a program called Behind Closed Doors that claims to teach “the specific strategies we have used to create a sustainable income online while we travel the world.”

Not too long ago, I attended a webinar they held to promote the program. In short, I wasn’t too impressed, however I don’t think they are necessarily scammers.

Based on their demeanor and the fact that they do seem to spend an extraordinary amount of time travelling the world, I suspect that they are better at doing the stuff they claim to do than they are at explaining it.

Who are Nate and Hannah?

Nathan Buchanan

Nate is a former New Zealand plumber who decided that fixing people’s toilets was not the life he wanted to lead. Now, he travels the world with his girlfriend.

If you look at Nate’s social media channels, there’s no doubt that he travels the world a lot. He’s got ample video and photo evidence to prove it. Personally, he strikes me as a bit of a surfer bro, but he’s probably a ton of fun to drink with.

Hannah Martin

Hannah graduated from an accounting program in 2014, and like Nate, she wanted to follow a different path in life. Now, she travels the world with her boyfriend.

There’s also no doubt in my mind that she travels a lot. Again, plenty of photo evidence.

The Webinar

After attending more than a few webinars, seminars, master classes, and training sessions on social media management, I’m starting to think that the “secrets” to social media success are pretty much common sense – have a unique message, post consistently, repeat for months until you get traction.

I don’t doubt that Hannah and Nate are skilled with social media, and they’d likely be a shoo-in for a social media management job in corporate if they ever got tired of traipsing around the world.

That said, their webinar wasn’t terribly informative. The wisdom they imparted could be boiled down to the following:

Have a niche: Where have we heard that before? (Oh yeah, every other webinar in existence)

Be a good storyteller: Good advice, but their explanation left a lot to be desired, and doesn’t leave me confident in that they can actually teach other people about storytelling.

Make sure you link your social media accounts together: That way, you can post one piece of content across multiple social channels. Also known as Social Media 101.

If you want to learn about how to choose a niche, or tell stories, there are better resources out there.

Annoying Sales Tactics

Like other webinars geared towards aspiring world travelers and millennial entrepreneurs, Nate and Hannah (mostly Nate) bragged about their lifestyle, had a rags-to-riches story (see Nate’s video above), and assured people that this “isn’t a get-rich-quick scheme” and you’ll have to “put in the work”.

I didn’t find them (read: Nate) nearly as annoying as Mike Vestil or Sam Ovens, but he was definitely wearing his salesperson hat during the webinar. That said, I’d still have a beer with them if our paths happened to cross.

What are they selling?

As you can tell, Nate and Hannah have built up a pretty sizable social media following over the past couple of years. The goal of Behind Closed Doors is to show other people how to build a social media empire of their own.

The course includes a step-by-step guide on how to build up a blog, monthly reports with tips, tricks, and thoughts, and a list of digital business ideas.

Do they know what they’re talking about? Probably, in the sense that they can clearly do it for themselves. But just because someone is a subject matter expert doesn’t mean they’re good teachers.

Is it worth the money? Who knows. Based on the webinar, I’m not sure they bring enough of a unique perspective to the world of social media management to justify buying this course over anything else.

As always, if you’ve taken this course and have something to say, please sound off in the comments.

I’ve interviewed Nate and Hannah twice for the local newspaper (same hometown), and you couldn’t find a more genuine couple – both personally, and in their business model. To address your issues with what they do.

“… the ‘secrets’ to social media success are pretty much common sense – have a unique message, post consistently, repeat for months until you get traction”

Yes. this is true. In much the same way that the ‘secrets’ to writing a CV that will be read every time are out there for anyone to see. But people pay me $399 to write their CVs , or attend a seminar, because people generally want someone else to tell them what to do, and to tell them they’re doing it right.

“The wisdom they imparted could be boiled down to the following …”

Yes, it can. And so can the secrets to writing a good CV. But (a) not everyone is capable of pulling out the basics from swamps of information, and (b) it can take a lot of time to scroll through that information to find the good stuff.

“doesn’t leave me confident in that they can actually teach other people about storytelling”

They do this by example. Do they tell people what to write, and how to write it? No. Because engaging social media is about getting your personality and voice across, and that’s not something that can be taught. You have to be you. Nate and Hannah do clearly demonstrate this in their posts. You learn by osmosis.

“isn’t a get-rich-quick scheme” and you’ll have to “put in the work”.

I’m not sure what you objection to this is. It’s very true. Too many people sign up for these webinars/courses, do five minutes of work, and then get pissed off with the person who ran the webinar because they don’t make buckets of money and are able to quite their job the following week. It took Nate three or four years to get to where he is now, so no, it’s not a get-rich-quick scheme, and yes, he did put in the work.

“… just because someone is a subject matter expert doesn’t mean they’re good teachers.”

I must disagree with this. I followed Hannah’s step-by-step instructions to set up a blog, and found them clear and precise. Of course, there are intricacies to WordPress that even as an HTML website designer of 20+ years found challenging. On that note, I was fortunate enough that Hannah met up with me for coffee and sorted the issues I’d been having for weeks in half an hour. Did she charge me anything for it? No. Because that’s the kind of people they are.

Their BCD videos are a great help, and easy-to-follow. If anyone is having trouble with the basics of what they teach, then maybe a career as a blogger isn’t for them.

I remember one time Nate stumbled across statistics that said only 20% of people get anything of value out of webinars or in-person talks. He was horrified to think that 80% of people wouldn’t get anything out of what he was trying to teach them, on was planning to change everything to try and get a 100% success rate. A number of us (older folks) quietly explained the Pareto Principle to him.

One of the key strengths to BCD is the online community Nate and Hannah have built up (currently just under 9K members). Two things are clear from the questions people ask.

1. No one asks anything they couldn’t find the answer to themselves if they did some research.
2. People want to hear the answer from another human being, not from Google.

This is why travel agencies still exist. There is nothing travel-related you can’t buy on-line, but many people still go to the bricks-and-mortar store to get that reassurance from another human being they’re doing the right thing – or to get another human they considered “an expert” to do it for them. BCD is no different. I even used it yesterday to ask about blocking spam registers from my blog. Yes, I could have researched the answer myself but (a) I was too busy and (b) when I did type in “Block spam on WordPress” into Google, I had 3,500+ hits. Much easier to ask in the community, the excellent Marcus Dace replied, and I was sorted in less than five minutes.

I think your review of BCD is very unfair to both Nate and Hannah, and to those who get so much benefit out of it. Check out their FB group “Intrepid Entrepreneurs Community”, and you’ll see I’m not the only one who gets so much benefit both out if the free-access group, and the paid-for BCD. No, they’re not telling me anything I can’t find myself on-line. But they’re saving me (and thousands of others) hours and hours of research.

In the half hour I spent with Hannah, she solved issues I’d spent a total of about 20 hours researching. If she hadn’t been in the same town, I could have found all that info on BCD in about two hours – so a saving of 18 hours. My charge out rate for tech writing is $80 an hour, so the opportunity cost of me doing the research myself for “free” so I didn’t pay their fee of $200 per annum would have been $1440. My half hour with Hannah has covered the cost of my BCD membership for the next seven years.

Of course they’re not going to have a 100% success rate with people being happy with their webinars – they’re dealing with people. I run training and development seminars. Every single seminar I run, at least one person rates it one star, a handful rate it two-three stars, even when the majority are rating it four or five star.

Nate and Hannah’s Behind Closed Door is one of the best sources of blog and digital nomad related information I’ve found on the net. If you’re not getting out of it what thousands of other people are, while that’s a shame, I feel it’s not a valid reason to list BCD on the “bad-business-advice” section of your website.

I find all these thing follow the same structure… they paint the picture of the dream.. that you can have it too… give you some basics and talk over and over about the golden information they’re going to give you that will change your life without actually saying anything specific… and then bring in the bargain price tag which is a special discount just for you. By which point the people who are desperate for something that will get them out of the life they are currently hating and closer to this “dream” are sucked in and will buy it… only to realise they’re out of pocket and no closer to anything life changing. That may be my cynicism talking though…They seem like nice people and hey everyone’s got to make a living.

I attended their webinar this morning, and I have to agree that they didn’t really share anything that I haven’t heard before. Very elementary stuff. They did mention a couple of their monetizing techniques VERY briefly and basically told everyone to buy the ‘Behind Closed Doors’ to actually learn the techniques. I’m tempted to buy it. I’ll be a bit mad if I waste $97 for the course, but maybe not too mad. haha I’ve been working on my blog for almost a year now, although not consistently enough. Maybe I’ll get some valuable info from them. My travel blog: http://outofofficewithrebecca.weebly.com/